A big part of the fun of gardening is getting to know your fellow gardening peeps. This past year, I got to get up close and personal with great gardener Heidi Heiland of Heidi’s Lifestyle Gardens of Plymouth, MN. My profile of Heidi and her gardening lab and studio — which also happens to be…

Shade is common among us plant lovers, especially those of us who adore and overplant trees and shrubs in our yards. Shade can be limiting, though, especially when it comes to infusing color and how many pots of impatiens and begonias can you plant, year after year, and remain enthused? So, I was excited to…

Oh, where do I begin? Shrub roses are faithful garden lovers, I have discovered. I had always sort of overlooked them — like sweet science nerds and band geeks in high school — but I designed three garden spaces at a retirement community this past summer and I fell under the magic spells they cast….

I’ve been suffering a garden identity crisis throughout the last few summers, craving more flowers, more beauty, more vistas, yet wanting to grow edibles in a big way. What’s a garden boy to do? Enter the full-frontal vegetable gardening approach. Now, believe me, I find a traditional, full-on vegetable garden beautiful. You know, the square…

I read the books. I keep my eyes open. I visit pristine gardens. I try to plant in waves of odd numbered plants and I do my best to practice “right plant, right place,’ knowing that sun-loving plants pass out in the shade. But no matter how hard I try, my garden turns into a…

I have found dahlias to be about as addictive as wasabi peas and chocolate covered almonds. Oh, I’ve always found them enchanting, to be sure, and have certainly swooned while visiting the dahlia test garden at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum — that little caged jewel box of delights. But, this is my first year of…

Several years ago, I focused my July Obsessions column in Northern Gardener magazine on the divine east-metro gardener Michelle Mero Riedel and her love of lilies. She opened me up to the splendor of the flower that I had previously viewed as maybe a bit to0 futzy for my personal garden taste. Now I am hooked….

I was tickled to hear from so many fellow clematis lovers about their passions for the perennial climber that splays such scrumptious flowers. I also heard your confusion over pruning — the when and how-to of it. Do you cut the vine to the ground in the spring or only back to the emerging buds…

An editor I work with does not like her writers to use phrases like clematisaholic or clematisphile and I’m on-board with that — it does seem to make light of very real and serious issues. That said, this week alone I purchased ‘Carnaby’ (sometimes reported as zone 5) and ‘Venosa Violacea’ and transplanted Clematis Virginiana…

In my world, lilacs evoke memories like nothing else in the garden. The end of school is what what comes to mind for me. I have a specific memory of all of us first-graders bringing little bouquets for Mrs. Tews and filling her desk with them. Everyone needs a lilac bush in their yard. True,…

A quick shout-out to an oft-overlooked ornamental grass that really is one of my favorites. Fall-blooming Feather Reedgrass (Calamagrostis brachytricha) can work as an anchor in your perennial border, with its graceful, arching, inverted-V form. At 4-feet tall and a spread of about 3-feet, it fills holes and pockets in your design and sits happily…

Blue Fescue ‘Elijah Blue’ has been greeting visitors at the front border of the Garden Drama test garden for over 10 years. How does one make blue fescue (Festuca glauca ‘Elijah Blue’) happy? From my experience — sun, sun, sun. Bake it to get that great, matte-blue cast to its spiky blades. And really well-drained soil,…

Water gardens are something I have dipped my toe into in only in the last few years. I always thought they were for someone else. They struck me as too expensive (though they can be), too involved (that can happen, too), and too high-maintenance (oh, yeah, sometimes). But, my overarching garden theory is that it’s…